"to window out" for "to winnow out"

775 ghits for “windowing out” alone, and many more for various permutations, such as “windowed out,” etc. – but some of these hits are for a use of “to window out” that is clearly rather different in meaning, seemingly having to do with the “windows” on a computer screen. This substitution (if that’s what it is) is very common in high-tech situations (especially astronomy and acoustical engineering), and it may be driven by the competing, computer-specific definition of “to window out.” And/or there may be a perfectly legitimate, technical use of “to window out” that hasn’t yet shown up in the dictionaries and that means virtually the same as “to winnow out” in some instances – the last example in particular makes me concerned that I’m way out of my depths here. I’d appreciate any and all help from the more technologically literate among us.

The first instance below is from Bill Gates, and it’s probably not surprising that he has Windows on the brain. For some of the other writers, I wonder whether the metaphorical use of a window as a principle of selectivity in phrases like “window of opportunity” isn’t part of the mix informing this interesting phrase.

Coincidentally, the reshaped form of the verb more closely resembles its Old English etymon “windwian,” meaning “to subject to wind or an air current.”

Examples:

It’s really going to take the Web to become a part of our everyday life, and there will be some windowing out, some of those people won’t wait and be able to continue to invest in it, until the market becomes large enough.http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/sanjose.asp

While bandamp can be used to select only the stronger amplitudes to produce a result similiar to noise filtering or expansion, its real use is for zeroing in on the weaker amplitudes by windowing out the stronger. Setting a window range of -20 to -96 will do this. Wispy violin notes windowed this way will be reduced to their noise in a kind of unvoiced mode.http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/arc … oonce.html